Because most people tend to take infrastructure in any form for granted, the full range of infrastructure requirements, issues, and concerns are understood only by the providers—
the professional staff who develop, install, and maintain the infrastructure and provide the services that rely upon it. Effective strategic decision-making regarding IT investments requires an informed community. In particular, CIOs need to help administrators understand what is necessary to build and maintain a robust, efficient, and effective IT environment. This understanding begins with IT infrastructure.
For most colleges and universities, the development and use of new learning technologies represents the first truly mission critical IT application. Where IT is routinely used to support student learning, campuses are expected to provide a much more robust, reliable, and functional IT environment. Faculty and students need and expect access any time, from anywhere, without any excuses. CIOs and administrators need to address the concomitant question: should this be provided at any cost?
At the University of Michigan, we have developed a layered architectural model of the campus IT environment, which is shown in Fig. 4.1. This model, which we refer to as the wall, is used primarily as a means of communication with the campus community. The model comprises five separate layers: physical infrastructure, facilities and operations, middleware and enabling technologies, core applications and services, and specialized applications and services. For the purposes of this chapter, the campus IT infrastructure is defined as consisting of the lowest four layers of the model. Specialized applications and services are discussed briefly in this chapter, as is the permeable membrane separating this layer from the four layers of IT infrastructure.
Physical Infrastructure: Linking the Components Together
The lowest layer of the IT architectural model includes the components that are traditionally thought of as IT infrastructure—the physical telecommunications channels that link campus computing resources and users. This layer includes the voice, video, and data communications systems—the wiring, fiber, routers, hubs, controllers, and switches that are hidden underground or behind building walls. In today’s environment, we also include the IT infrastructure to support wireless communications in this layer.
Facilities and Operations: Where the People and Machines Are
Facilities represent additional hard structural components that are essential for campus IT service delivery. Facilities include data centers, public access computer laboratories, classrooms, training rooms, and performance spaces. Because IT is applicable to virtually every aspect of the campus learning mission, the relationship between the physical environment and the technology environment becomes more complex and critical.
Campuses are faced with the need to balance ubiquity, reliability, flexibility, diversity, and costs.
FIG. 4.1. Michigan model of information technology.
Middleware and Enabling Technologies: The Forgotten Layer
Middleware and enabling services are the least understood layer of the architectural model. They are essential for any of the core or specialized IT applications to work. This layer is significantly impacted by increased user demands and by the advent of closely integrated and dependent applications. Included in this layer are directory services;
identification, authentication and authorization services; and security services. Although colleges and universities have provided such services to their communities for many years, they have not always been implemented to ensure robustness and scalability on a campuswide, around-the-clock basis. Colleges and universities embody a culture of openness and knowledge sharing that must be balanced with the need to provide secure
access to individual and institutional data, transactions, and applications. Although securing data and applications is a relatively recent requirement, in today’s environment, security and privacy needs are priorities that require serious campuswide attention.
Core Applications and Services: What Everyone Can Expect
Core applications are defined as the IT applications that are provided universally to the campus community. These applications include such services as e-mail, Internet access, word processing and office productivity tools, statistical applications, mathematical subroutine libraries, access to library resources, and access to administrative information systems supporting such functions as student records, financial transactions, and personnel records. All individuals in the campus community should be able to assume that these services are available to them by virtue of their employment or enrollment. As new learning technologies evolve into ubiquitous services, they also fall into this layer.
Clearly, the actual components comprising this layer vary from campus to campus, and the components change significantly over time.
Specialized Applications and Services: Serving Special Needs
This layer includes all other user applications—those that serve the needs of specific units or clusters of units, demonstration systems, and pilot projects. Examples of these applications might include parallel computing resources, geographic information systems, music composition systems, and medical instruments. Many campuses are now experimenting with online learning technology applications, and these applications initially reside in this layer. If the use of a specialized application spreads broadly across the campus, then that application is moved down to the core applications layer of the model. Before moving the specialized application to the core application layer, however, the impact of the application on all lower layers of the model must be fully understood so that infrastructure performance can be maintained. In some cases, significant upgrades will be needed to the lower layers of the infrastructure to support the migration of a specialized application into the core application layer.
The Permeable Membrane Separating Specialized From Core Applications
The interaction between the specialized applications layer and lower layers is represented in our model as a permeable membrane. The infrastructure, facilities, enabling applications, and core applications layers must be functional, reliable, responsive, available, and cost-effective. These layers must be scaled to support a degree of experimentation and testing of new specialized applications. With the IT infrastructure securely in place, specialized applications can be safely built on top of it. Specialized applications can migrate to the core services layer when they are able to meet the requirements of being sustainable, transferable, scalable, and cost-effective.
At the University of Michigan, we have provided our community with more definition to the layers by specifying the individual bricks that comprise each layer of the wall.
Each brick represents a specific IT service or application, defined in user terminology.
Various views of the wall can be produced, showing costs, funding sources, numbers of
users, numbers of transactions, and unit costs for each brick. In this way, the IT architectural model provides the campus community with a common understanding of the IT infrastructure and a common vocabulary for discussing related issues. This chapter explores in depth some of the individual bricks that comprise the wall and offers advice to CIOs and administrators regarding the selection of specific brick to build an appropriately designed wall for their campuses.